


the hollow summer

by deadlybride



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Boy King of Hell Sam Winchester, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 12:14:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22495921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlybride/pseuds/deadlybride
Summary: Sam rescued Dean from hell, but when it was over only Dean came back to earth. Every summer they steal a few months together, but Sam can never stay. Dean's figuring out how to live with that.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 68
Kudos: 146
Collections: Sam Winchester Big Bang 2019-20





	the hollow summer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WetSammyWinchester](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WetSammyWinchester/gifts).



> Written for the Sam Winchester Big Bang, based on a prompt from wetsammywinchester, who asked for a very reluctant boy king Sam tied together with the myth of Persephone. 
> 
> Thanks forever to my two betas nigeltde and the School, without whom I'd write very little, these days; equally big thanks to quickreaver for the art and the excitement. <3
> 
> Check out the art post [here](https://quickreaver.tumblr.com/post/190627321649/zmediaoutlet-and-i-teamed-up-for-the)!

When it started the ritual was more important. There were forms, and words, and reagents, and they had to be followed precisely, and Dean followed them, with his heart beating so hard in his throat he thought he’d hurl, and his hands shaking, and his legs weak enough that, when it finally worked, he collapsed down to his knees and it took him long minutes to stand. Maybe he would’ve been a wreck, either way. Bringing Sam back—it still knocked him down, even after all these years. Maybe he would’ve been on his knees either way.

Years, though, and he’s learned now what matters. Witches he’s met, and killed, and demons he’s interrogated, and even a few angels, stretched out on a spelled-iron rack it took him months to build. He still doesn’t have an answer to the question he kept asking, but he learned. How things worked. How the universe took, and what it offered for the taking. The world still isn’t how it should be—how could it be, with that empty space in the passenger seat—but another thing Dean has learned is to take what he can get, when he can get it. Some days—most days—it’s all that gets him through to midnight, and watching another day tick by.

There’s a field, near a creek that flows swollen and fast in spring. Grass grows thick on the banks, and sycamores tap the soaking soil and seem to get taller, every year. When Dean comes they’re thick with new leaves and the field’s shaded, quiet in the dawn. He leaves the car back on the road and walks the rest of the way, the earth soft under his boots. Birds call in the trees and he can hear the water, breaking over roots and stone. It’s peaceful. That was all he wanted, back then. All he had to offer. He stands in the dappled shade, breathing in the smell of growing things, and the water, and the spring day growing slowly warmer, and then he kneels before the slab, and puts his hands on it, and closes his eyes.

His ribs hurt, after the fight with that group of vamps last week, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, right now, but this. The stone is black basalt, thick and jagged-edged, the width and length of a body. Years ago, Dean came with cloth-of-gold, with a blessed silver blade, with an ivory cup, with hard-won petals of amaranth and white heather. He knelt before the slab and spoke the words for hours, until his voice was gone and he could only shape the air with his mouth, and at midnight he went through the steps of the ritual exactly as prescribed. It worked. Dean couldn’t believe it, that it worked. He’s learned, though, and now he knows: it was never the words, or the cloth-of-gold, or the flowers. It was him. Him, and Sam.

His ribs hurt, but he kneels, leaned forward with his weight bearing down onto the cool stone. He hasn’t eaten and his stomach aches, and subsides, and aches again. The sun inches across the sky and the birdsong changes. He breathes slow and steady, heat creeping over his back as noon strips the shade from the field, and the stone warms with him. It’s a slow day, the first of May. He never sees much of it.

When the sun sinks down below the hills, he opens his pack. A piece of bread, broken in half; he eats his portion slowly, his mouth filling with spit and his gut begging for it. The flask of water, filled easy from the tap at home, half-gone, and the flask of blood, filled harder, half-gone, too. He sets the other half of the bread and the water and the blood on the still-warm dirt in front of the slab, and with his tongue still iron-thick with the taste he goes to the creek and lets the cold water wash over his hands, so they’re clean.

Midnight, approaching. He kneels in the grass and feels empty as a glass jar. His lips are dry, despite the water, despite the blood; he lets them part, sticky, and pulls in deep slow draughts of the cool air. His body hurts, in a way both distant and unfortunately not—his ribs, and his legs cramped and stiff, and his shoulders achy with waiting. His body, though, has exactly one job to do, and he’s always been able to rely on it for this. He drags his hands up his thighs and finds his dick, half-chubbed from what he’s known was coming, and grips, and feels it like a fist seizing into his guts, his bones and nerves all coming alive, jumping to what he has to do.

Before, he laid himself out like a sacrifice, absurd in a ritual robe, shaved clean, shaky with fearful hope. Now there’s just the night on his skin, and the moon hanging heavy somewhere behind his head, and his hands and his dick and the smooth pulsing pump of his blood, the quickening thump of it up in his gut, the pit of his empty stomach glowing, twisting, wanting. He bites his lip, lifts up on his knees, his dick slick under the smooth slide of his hand, his nuts drawing up. The night’s thick and cool, the stars dizzying overhead, and Dean’s thoughts narrow to what matters—the body, the want, the heat filling up and cramping his thighs, his eyes squeezed tight and his dick flexing and the flash inside his head of—and when he comes it spatters the stone, as he curls over himself, one hand bracing against the basalt and the other wringing himself out, his head then as entirely empty as his heart, and he sleeps, then, curled on the grass, a sacrifice made: bread and water and blood and life, and time paid along with the full measure of his devotion, meted out to the stone, so that when dawn breaks again in the east beyond the trees and the birds begin calling, anxious for another day, Dean wakes to a warm hand on his face, and no matter how many times he's done this it’s like the world staggers, for a second, before he can open his eyes and there’s Sam, sitting there on the slab, his mouth cautious, his hair a mess.

“Dude, what are you doing?” Sam says, and Dean covers Sam’s hand with his own and sits up, the universe resettling around him. Sam frowns at him, but in that way where it looks like he wants to smile, and will just as soon as Dean’s not looking. “Did you let some stripper steal your clothes again?”

“Look who’s talking,” Dean says, hoarse and heart-sore, and pulls Sam in and feels him, young and clean and living and _his_. Startled, Sam’s hands land on Dean’s shoulders, before he leans in to the hug. Dean threads his hand into Sam’s hair, and he’ll let go, at some point. He always does, eventually.

*

The passenger seat, full. Dean drives, his tongue thick and stupid, while Sam asks the same questions. Not the exact phrasing, every time—this isn't a groundhog day, or at least it isn't one for Dean. Still, Sam asks. What happened. Where are we. Are you okay.

"I'm okay now," Dean says, glancing across the seat, and Sam sighs, frustrated like he always is when Dean's holding back, but the corner of his mouth is soft, and he runs his hand through his hair and ducks his head and there's that smile, that small and heartbreaking thing. When Sam looked like this for real, Dean didn't get to see it all that often. Maybe the one benefit, of this arrangement. That he gets that smile, from this Sam.

The Sam who wakes up on the slab is naked, and unmarred. No tattoo, no scars, no unsolid bones. That trick elbow that used to give him grief—no more. He comes to Dean in a split second, between one blink and another, and there's no gaping maw of hell opening, or angels wrestling him back to the earth. It's almost easy. Dean's heart gone one minute, and beating again the next.

This Sam is twenty-six, because that was the age he was when it happened, and as far as Dean can tell he'll be twenty-six forever. His hair that messy mop, parted to one side like he started to do after Dean wouldn't stop asking him what boy band he planned to join; his arms and chest and legs all strong, muscle swelling and his skin that pretty bronze. He'd come into his body, back then. His jaw squared, and his shoulders too. The long stretch of his forearms, and the easy capable turn to his hands as he taps his thumb on his thigh, and maneuvers the pump when they stop for gas, and how he asks Dean to get him orange juice from the c-store, his eyes clear. "You'll get a donut and like it, bitch," Dean says, and gets Sam to roll his eyes, and Sam doesn't need to know that Dean watches him the whole time through the big store windows, his chest aching like a blade's just gone clean through and someone's messily shoved it back together without enough stitches to hold it.

They drive until they come to the house, in the late afternoon. "Whose is this?" Sam says, and Dean doesn't answer, because here Sam is again. On the porch, golden light in his hair. Sam frowns at him, standing on the step, but he comes closer when Dean holds his hand out, and he blinks surprise—but not all that much surprise, after all—when Dean tugs him close, closer. His hands frame Dean's shoulders, his head dipping those few inches. "Dean?" Sam says, but it's not really a question, and Dean lifts his chin and breathes in and gets Sam's mouth, warm and living, and that puts off any answers Sam might need again, for at least another day.

The house only has the one bedroom, and the one bed. Sam goes down on his back gratifyingly fast. Together they strip off the clothes Dean brought for him, the old boots Dean's saved for a decade—and there, all that golden skin, dotted with moles Dean's had memorized what feels like half his life. Sam's brow crumples when Dean's naked, too—his fingers go immediately to the bullet-scar on Dean's chest, just like they have the last handful of summers—but Dean only says, _Sam_ , and Sam's eyes snap back up to meet his, and Dean slides his hand along Sam's jaw and touches his thumb under Sam's lip and Sam doesn't say anything, because maybe he can't remember and maybe he's a little afraid, even, but none of that's important. Not right now.

This first time, every time, Dean's selfish. Sam grabs for him, because Sam at twenty-six was demanding, needed more than even Dean could give, but for now Dean stills his hands, goes slow. The bed's soft, the blankets old and the springs giving, and Dean keeps Sam there on his back and leans over his chest and kisses him, breathes him, until Sam's mouth is as soft as the spring air drifting through the window, his fingers curled against Dean's sides just holding. Dean could do this—has done this—for hours, until their lips were sore-chapped, until Sam looked drunk when Dean finally pulled back. He looks close to tipsy, right now, his hair screwed up on one side where Dean's had his hand sunk into it, and he rolls his eyes when Dean smiles at him, wide and happy—and he full-on gasps, his body arching, when Dean drops down and sucks in his dick in a single easy swoop. His hips arch, and Dean presses them down, leaning his weight in until Sam's thighs spasm, spreading around his shoulders, and that gives Dean the time to pull back, lick his lips, slick down and really feel it.

There aren't words, for how much he misses Sam when he's gone. It doesn't bear thinking about, especially when Sam's here in front of him. Regardless of any talk of souls, or hearts broken in half, or love—Dean misses this, too. The weight, on his tongue. The taste, salt and bitter, and Sam's smell, and the ache in Dean's jaw when he strains to hold Sam heavy in the back of his throat, spit swelling up and his lungs empty. Long fingers brush over his ears, the back of his head. "Dean," he hears, breathed out, and Sam's thighs flex, and Dean pulls off at last with tears sparking the light into pieces, and buries his face down against Sam's hip, and he says, "Sammy, let me fuck you," and Sam gasps and clutches at his shoulder and he says yes, yes, just like Dean knew he would.

Slow here, too, and at Dean's pace. Sam wants it, is shocked at how much he wants it, not knowing the things Dean knows. Dean's prepared, and he fingers Sam and watches Sam fist his own wet dick, watches him get frustrated and kisses him to shut him up from bitching, because he is an absolute bitch—and Dean tells him so, and his heart throbs when Sam rolls his eyes, scoffs, hitches his hips against Dean's hand. "C'mon, man," Sam says, knee dragging up Dean's side, lips red, and Dean pulls out his fingers and replaces them with his dick and watches Sam's eyes go wide, and then squeeze shut, and he grabs Dean's arm and his hip and he arches and Dean can't get enough, he can't. He grips Sam's hair, makes sure he doesn't duck away—watches his face, the startled part of his lips as Dean nudges deeper, and he says, "Sammy, look at me," and Sam does what he's told for fuckin' once, curls his hips and takes Dean inside, a flush burning into the hollows of his cheeks, his dick half-soft and pressed into the lowest curve of Dean's stomach. Dean'll take care of him, he will. He always does. For now, though, Dean's getting what he wants, and what he wants is this.

Sam's eyes stay on him, fox-slanted, nearly black. The straight line of his brow. His mouth, red, open, and Dean bends down and brushes their lips together in something that's almost a kiss. Stubble coming in on Sam's jaw, and the sweat in his sideburn, and the sweet dark space behind his ear, where it smells most like him, and where when Dean bites Sam's whole body flinches and shivers and clutches around him, his hips kicking up into where Dean's driving into him, where he's open. "God, Sammy," Dean says, and Sam grabs his shoulder, keeps him close, and that's all Dean can say—he presses his face into the warm soft dark of Sam's throat and feels his pulse and grinds home, and that way Sam doesn't see whatever might be in Dean's eyes, when it gets to be too much.

After, Sam's awake. Dean is, too, though Sam takes it out of him, these days. He lays on his back, with his eyes closed, and knows that Sam's looking at him, and wondering. Another touch, to the scar on his chest, and to the slashes across his ribs, and the twisty raw mark from the knife that almost got him, there at the top of his thigh. A touch to his jaw, and then to the lines beside his eyes, and Dean's not exactly vain but he's honest enough to know that he still looks good, and even so he feels his face get warm, his ears going that telltale pink. He doesn't blush much, anymore. Figures, Sam'd bring it out in him.

"How old are you?" Sam says, finally.

He doesn't sound accusing, or judgmental. Dean wonders how long he's been thinking about it, over these hours when Dean wouldn't answer any of his more oblique questions. "Forty," he says, and Sam's hand doesn't stiffen, and he doesn't flinch. When Dean opens his eyes Sam's just looking at him, his head propped up on one hand. He's so young it makes Dean's chest ache. "It's 2019, Sam."

Sam's fingers drag down his jaw, to his throat, and his palm covers the ruined tattoo they used to share, the splintery fragments of it just barely recognizable under the damage done to it so long ago. "Will you tell me?"

Dean covers his hand, sore. "Yeah," he says, but he doesn't say anything then, and Sam lies down there with him while the sun sinks down and away, and night makes it easier, to hold each other and let Dean pretend, for a while, that things are other than what they are. That it's a decade ago, and they're both whole, and that they're beholden to nothing more than each other.

*

The house Dean found in the second year. It's small. A basement, a porch. One bedroom, one room with a toilet and a big metal tub and a cracked mirror and first aid supplies in a trunk that Dean rarely has to use. A parlor, of sorts, filled with stacks and stacks of books and scrolls and ancient parchment, all useless in the end. At the back of the house, a kitchen, narrow but with a big window that faces east—where, after Dean wakes alone in the bed and his heart nearly fails at how the blankets beside him are cold, he finds Sam, sitting at the little table, holding a cup of coffee, watching the day creep across the fields.

He's wearing his own sweats, which he must've found in the chest of drawers Dean salvaged, and Dean's t-shirt, stained with bleach all along one side, and his hair's pushed back from his forehead, and his eyes are distant, lit green in the morning. Dean looks at him. After a slow round of breathing, of feeling the house un-cold with emptiness, Sam glances over at him and says, "There's coffee," and he doesn't say more than that but Dean knows there will be more. "Yeah," Dean says, and pours a cup, and sets himself in the only other chair opposite Sam, and Sam looks at him, then, with his brow a crumple, but his jaw set and steady.

"I don't remember anything," Sam says, and Dean nods, and Sam says, "This is nuts, man," and Dean nods at that, too.

"How?" Sam says, and Dean doesn't know the answer to that. He's never known what Sam did. He's rarely honest, anymore, with most people, but he's honest with Sam, and he says, "I tried to find out," like he has these last many years, and Sam sets his mug down with a thump and looks off to the side, his mouth twisted with frustration.

He really did. There was a lot of hurt, in him trying. Things died. In the dead of that second winter he nearly bled out, summoning demons, trying to find out _why_ —why couldn't he get Sam back—why did Sam always, always go back—and none of them would tell, and three in a row burnt to death from the inside, scorch boiling out from their throats without Dean doing another thing to them, and Dean knew then that he'd never know, and he hated Sam a little bit, then. More than a little bit. He sat in the frozen air, amid the burnt earth, watching the snowflakes melt on the remains of the demon traps, and he wanted to die. Dying would be better, he'd thought, then. He wouldn't have to face these months, alone, not knowing how to change it.

In front of him, now, Sam's just as desperate to know what he did. "We can figure it out," he says, finally, determined, and Dean sits back in his chair. He's tired, from the long night—from a longer year—and Sam sees it, and shakes his head. "We can. C'mon, man. I know it's been—a long time, and I'm sorry, I wish I'd been here, but—we can do it. We always do."

Dean smiles. "Okay, Sammy," he says, and he figures Sam probably hears the indulgence in it, because he gets that pissy look on his face. It probably sounds condescending—and, well, maybe it is. Sam just seems younger every year. Dean shrugs, because it doesn't matter to him. No matter what they do, they'll be together. Might as well let Sam try. "Where do you want to start?"

*

Ten years ago, Dean went to hell. He remembers that. He remembers that day, in that ghost town, with Sam bleeding in his arms, and he remembers holding his hands against the warm rush of life-blood and thinking, no, and thinking: _no_. What he did—he wonders, sometimes. How things would be different. If he hadn't sat there in an empty house with Sam dead in front of him, and _known_ what he could do, to fix it. Maybe he would've killed himself, a few years later—or, more likely, would've let something else do it. A little too much to drink; too few hours of sleep. A hunt, where he should've stepped left and instead stepped right, and a monster at his throat, and no one to watch his back, and things finally just… done. Would he have gone to heaven, then? Would Sam have been waiting?

No way to know. Anyway. He can't imagine a version of himself that could've sat there, in the dim-dark of that horrible little house, that summer night, and looked at Sam's soft-closed eyes and his slack mouth and felt the cold touch of his hand, and not done—everything. That person—that wouldn't have been Dean Winchester, and for all his faults that's still who he is, despite all that's happened and all that will. So: he made a deal, and when that year came due he looked into Sam's horrified eyes and knew that it was the right call, and the only call, and then he died, and he went to hell.

Hell was—

Sam doesn't know. Sam doesn't remember. "Did I come for you?" he says, amid the wrecked piles of books and papers in Dean's parlor. Night again, a week passed, and Sam's been through every text Dean could dredge up about hell and deals and celestial contracts, and his eyes are red and his hair's fucked up from dragging his hands frustratedly through it. Dean hands him a beer, and Sam takes it but just puts it down on the bookshelf beside him, jumps up, paces. Dean watches him. "Did I—did I figure it out? What to do?"

"I guess you must've, Sammy," Dean says, for maybe the tenth time. Maybe more. Some of these days blur. He's comfortably soused, a bourbon bottle half-empty on the wood floor by his chair. "Here I am, and I'm not there. Not like they let me go out of the goodness of their hearts."

Sam gives him a pissy look, and drops onto the only other chair in the room, a poof of dust pluming around him. "Why can't I…" he says, and trails off, and buries his face in his hands.

Dean watches, because in these early days Dean can't seem to do anything but. He sympathizes, but at this point he doesn't much care, because he knows Sam'll remember, later. Sam always remembers. The problem is that he never tells.

"What happened," Sam says, into his hands, and Dean takes a breath.

It was dark, and that was—terrifying. There were so many other things that had happened. Things of pain, of misery. Whispers in his ear. Nightmares, brought forth so vivid there were days Dean couldn't believe there'd ever been daylight, or clean things, until the nightmare ended, and he didn't have time to be grateful because there were his hosts, leaning over him, smiling, reminding him: that this was how it was going to be, forever. The end of days would come and go and here Dean still would be, because he'd made a bargain, and: didn't he regret it, after all? Didn't he want to not hurt, anymore? In the face of that, dark shouldn't have mattered, but it did.

When he took up the blade—and he doesn't spare telling Sam that, even if Sam's eyes go round and wet and he goes still as a rabbit on his golden-lit side of the room—when Dean took up the blade, the torture didn't end. It only shifted. The nightmare crawled over his skin, and when he closed his eyes it got worse, and that day, he'd peeled apart a woman until she was past screaming and he still held her undying under his heart, and it was dark, and then there was Sam.

This part, he's never been sure about. How it happened. He doesn't remember opening his eyes; only that Sam was there, with his hands on Dean's face, and he'd rubbed his thumbs over Dean's cheekbones and was heedless of the wet there and he'd said, clearly, _no more_ , and there was—light.

"That doesn't make sense," Sam says, frustrated.

"I woke up," Dean says, and it's part true, part a lie. He came to in a clearing, the grass scorched around him, the sun high overhead. "You set me free."

Across the room, Sam swallows. He doesn't look sure, that it's true. Maybe he's right. It's not until later that he'll know more, and what he did. What he promised.

Dean shakes his head. "C'mon, Sammy," he says, and he says it more gently than he says most other things. Funny, how quickly it comes back. Then again, Sam's worth caring for. "Let's eat, huh? I'll make you some rabbit food, even. Carrots or something."

Sam huffs. "Don't hurt yourself," he says, but when Dean crosses the floorboards Sam lets himself be pulled up to his feet, and he sighs but he smiles, too, crooked, and holds Dean by the waist. "I'm glad you're here," he says, soft, and Dean blinks, because that's new.

Sam squeezes his sides, drops his forehead down to touch Dean's, and Dean closes his eyes, his throat clutching up tight. Figures, that even after all this time, Sammy can surprise him. "You still gotta peel the carrots, bitch, don't think you're getting out of that," he says, rough-voiced, and Sam laughs even if it's small, and says, "Okay, Dean," and they put it away, that night, for a while. They have dinner, and they watch a movie on Dean's laptop—the first Karate Kid, because some things never get old—and when they go to sleep Dean curls into Sam's side and lays his head on Sam's chest and listens to him breathe, looking out the open window at the night.

*

Sam likes walking. Well, he likes _running_ , but Dean's knees don't stand for that and, anyway, he's always thought there was no point in it unless something was chasing him, so. They walk. The house sits alone, on farmland that should've been worked, and instead stands wild, bushes scraggling up, trees rooting deep. They walk past them, Sam soaking up the breathing living world. There's a pond, that Sam stands in front of for a long time, while Dean sprawls out on the thick-grown grass, and watches Sam watch the dragonflies skimming over its surface. Sam stoops, after long minutes, and throws a rock into the water, and watches the ripples waver out from the disturbance. The light catches his eyes so Dean can't see the look in them, but that's all right. He's here.

Sam wants to hear about Dean's life. Dean tells him, while they walk, or while they sit in the house and Sam chafes to be elsewhere, or while they drive. Dean takes him into the town to shop for groceries, and Sam stands and stares at the tech displays in the Walmart, touching the new iPad cautiously, blinking at the new Nintendo thing, at the graphics. Dean pushes the cart, ignores the squeaky wheel, smiles at Sam raising his eyebrows over all the new gluten free options, and talks. Hunting. The vampires, just before he came and got Sam. The werewolf, a few weeks before. A fae queen, who offered him a boon before he pierced her heart with cold iron; an angel, crazed and violent, whose eyes glowed blue when Dean murdered him.

"Angels?" Sam says, stopping in his tracks in the beer aisle, and Dean smiles, grabs a case off the middle shelf.

"Angels," he says, and from the sewn-in pocket of his jacket extracts the foot-long blade, awkward and obvious but something he keeps by him, all the time. Probably not needed, when Sam's here. There's not much that will try to bring him harm, when Sam's here. Still, it's a habit.

Sam touches it, careful. It doesn't burn his skin. There's no smoke, no flicker of lights. Movies really get everything wrong, Dean thinks. He runs his thumb over the tip, and it cuts him, because it's as always perilously sharp, and Sam hisses and inspects the wound, and then goes still as the cut heals up, before his eyes.

Dean puts the twelve-pack of El Sol on the bottom rack of the cart, and then takes Sam's wrist. "Hurt?" he says, with eyebrows raised, and Sam stares at him. He smears the blood away from the clear skin and finds it unmarred, as always. Sam stares, and his fingers curl, but his skin's warm under Dean's and his eyes are that same multicolored mess, and Dean shrugs. "Things are different, Sammy," he says, and pushes the cart out of the aisle and down toward the registers, and after a minute Sam follows, because—Sam, for all his stubborn-headedness and angst, for all that he's done exactly as he wanted, he'll still follow Dean, when it counts. Dean wonders what the massed ranks of Hell think of that. If any of them bring it up, among themselves. If it matters.

Sam's quiet, helps Dean load all the crap onto the belt. Smiles at the old-lady cashier, when she tells them to have a nice day. Rolls the cart himself, out to the Impala, and helps load their stuff into the trunk, and gets into the passenger seat and looks out the window at the pretty spring day, and then he says, "Tell me," and Dean touches his leg and says, "Okay, Sammy," but he doesn't talk then, and he drives back to the house, and they put the food away, and Sam goes out to sit on the porch and watch the sun set over the fields, and then Dean comes out with two beers and hands one to Sam and sets himself on the step just below, so he can lean his shoulder against Sam's knee, and Sam presses back against him and Dean sighs, and with his eyes on the horizon he licks his lips, and then he talks.

*

There was a prophecy, about Sam. Dean's never been able to piece the whole thing together. Something went wrong—when don't things go wrong, Dean wants to know—but something went wrong, and things didn't go like they should've. Azazel, old Yellow-Eyes, he killed their mother, and he killed Jessica, and he came for Sam, and it was supposed to be… different. Dean caught angels, later—angels!—who snarled, who wept, who spilled half-secrets. There was meant to be some great fight. Apocalypse. God had designed the world, and set all in motion, and there was meant to come a day when brother fought brother—when the earth could've burned, from the fallout.

Part of it, he'd been assured, was that he was meant to go to hell, and he'd done his part, more than, but Sam—changed things. A demon had helped Sam, he knows that much. She—and the demons, the angels, they always spat out that _she_ like acid, like she was the worst possible thing—she'd done what she was meant to do, she'd led Sam along a path of no return, only… Sam turned. That's the part Dean's never been sure of. Prophecies, they're the sort of thing that give Dean hives. Being told what he's _meant_ to do. Like his steps are in a grooved path, a train running off a cliff toward some final destination. Not Dean's cup of booze, that's for sure, and yet. A demon he caught, down in El Paso, told him earnest with its eyes bleeding black that things had gone exactly how they were supposed to go. That Dean's father had gone to war—that Dean's mother had hunted, and given up hunting to give birth to two sons—that Dean's mother had died—that Dean's father had gone a kind of mad—that Dean had been loyal—that Sam had rebelled. Each step, walked obediently by the Winchesters as though they'd practiced their parts. Sam died, and Dean did what he always would, and then Dean died, and Sam was meant to do the absolute worst thing, and instead he—

Dean doesn't know. Dean's never known, because Sam wouldn't tell him. But Sam came down, into the pit, and he found Dean on a rack of his own making, and he touched Dean's face and pulled him free and walked with him, keeping his eyes shielded from what remained of hell.

Demons tore at them both, but Sam was strong. Screaming surrounded them on all sides, but Sam was at Dean's ear, at his back, saying _don't listen, it's okay—it's okay, Dean, I promise, I'm here, I'm not going to leave you_. The air burned like fire, and then it was colder than blizzards, and Sam wrapped his arms around Dean's shoulders and Dean could breathe, if only barely. It was a long walk and Dean didn't know where they were going, and he wasn't sure that Sam knew, either, but for the first time in perfectly, miserably accounted years, he didn't hurt, and he was so grateful for that that he didn't question anything.

Stone, all around, or maybe it was cold metal. Iron, or rust. The facts didn't matter in the face of what was felt. It had hurt, and the hurting was the point, but then Sam was there, and it didn't hurt anymore. Dean remembers hell as awful claustrophobia, as choking. Fire and blood, vivid and bursting. When Sam came—it changed, and in those weird handfuls of pressed-together moments he didn't really understand how it was different, not until later.

There was light. Light, as at the end of a long hall, or leaking down weakly into a cavern from an opening too far off to hope for. Hell blossomed, broke open. The clamped-down suffocation eased until, looking out from the shelter of Sam's shoulder, Dean couldn't see the edges of wherever they were. Shadows, still, gathering all around, and the air thin and sharp in his throat like a cold morning, and Sam's skin was warm, but it was the only thing that seemed to be. Dean breathed deep for the first time in what he knew was decades, and he looked up, but Sam was looking somewhere else, his eyes distant, listening to something Dean couldn't hear.

 _Sam_ , Dean remembers saying, and Sam put his hand to the back of Dean's neck but he didn't respond, his face still and his lips barely parted.

There are things Dean's never understood. Why God allows pain. How people choose selfishness over the people they claim to love. Top of the list: why them. More important: why Sam?

When Dean was a kid his dad was the north star. Everything he chose, everything he felt, it spun around wanting to do right by that man, even if—well. Now that he's older he's forgiven a lot of what happened, back then. Destiny, fate. Some things a man can't fight against, and he's had the promises of angels and demons in his ears, telling him what his father had to bear—what he had to choose, even if he had no idea the consequences of his choosing. Dean's forgiven a lot, knowing now what he does. Despite all that, he's never regretted that his dad gave him Sam. Look out for your brother, that had been rule number one, and it buried itself right under Dean's heart. Sam's safety, Sam's life, it was Dean's to look after, and sometimes Sam's happiness might have fallen by the wayside but Dean was only one person, and he'd done what he could with what he had. With everything he had.

What happened, when Sam came to hell. That wasn't fair. Dean had done everything; he'd given everything. He'd laid himself on the universe's altar and said, _take me_ , and the universe had, and that should've been it. Sam should've lived, should've taken Dean's car and probably done some dumbass thing like painting it baby blue and put on spinning rims or something, and he should've gone on to hunt and go to law school simultaneously, somehow, and he should've defended the innocent or whatever damn thing he wanted, because that's who Sammy was. Dean knew, even when he was a kid, that Sam was meant for something better than the shoddy life Dean had managed to scratch out for him. Samuel Winchester, defender of the innocent; Sam, a hero. He'd held the image of that in the back of his head, all through that last year. Sam was going to be okay. Sammy always was.

Hell opened up; hell breathed. Sam's attention was caught by something Dean couldn't see and Dean touched him, Dean wound his fingers into Sam's hair and leaned up to his ear and said, _please, Sammy,_ but Sam didn't seem to hear. Shadows towered in the bleak open cavern that hell had become and Dean crouched low, hid his face. He wasn't brave, then. He'd been scraped clean and whatever was left didn't know how to fight, not anymore. Not like Sam could. All Dean had left was the hope that Sam would.

On the porch, Dean's finished his beer, and wishes for whiskey. Sam isn't touching him, anymore. The sun's down, past the treeline, and there's still light in the sky but it's fading fast. "I don't think hell's real," Dean says, running his thumb around the damp glass rim of his bottle. "I mean. It's real, but it's not—like, it's not Nebraska. Nothing you can really set your feet in, know which way is left and right. It's just a… vision. Whatever it needs to be, to just… suck."

Sam snorts. Dean turns his head. Sam's hands are in his line of vision, if not Sam's face. They're perfect, like always. Long fingers, broad clean nails. The fingers lace together, dropped hopeless between Sam's knees, and one long thumb drags restless against the knob of bone at the base of his palm. Dean wants to put his mouth there, and doesn't.

"I think that's true," Sam says, slowly. "Or—metaphysically, it's obviously not anything concrete." Metaphysically. Dean rolls his eyes. "I think it's… torture. Whatever would be torture, for the souls there."

Sam's wearing those old boots, dusty at the toes, his jeans ratty at the back where they've been walked on, over and over, every summer these last many years. Dean tugs at the frayed edge, frays it further—gives it up, and slides his hand up under the hem of his jeans to find warm skin, and wraps his hand around Sam's calf. Twitch of muscle, and Sam's knee tips in toward him, and Dean lets his weight droop against Sam's leg. He's tired. The thing is: Sam knows hell, from top to bottom, or whatever the _metaphysical_ equivalent is. Sam just doesn't remember. This part, the part where Sam's memories struggle back—it's not fair, either. Sam expects Dean to have the answers, and he doesn't have nearly as many answers as will satisfy.

"You okay?" Sam says, because he's young and therefore an idiot, and Dean huffs, hooks his chin over Sam's knee. There was torture, back then, and there was _torture_ , and what he has now—that's another thing, entirely. Sam made him promise, though, and that's one he can't break. "Dean," Sam says, softer, and Dean closes his eyes, and he says, "Let me tell you the rest later," and Sam touches the hollow tender spot at the base of his skull and then takes him to bed, and in a tangle of skin in the near-darkness Dean drinks in how Sam's here, here, and nowhere else, and he doesn't know what Sam thinks but Sam holds his face near the end, looks at him full-on with no shadow in his eyes, and maybe it's enough for Sam, now, like it is for Dean, when it wasn't so many times before. Dean hopes so. This, now, it’s a little respite. May's warm, and free, and new. Spring blooming thick with warmth, the smell of it drifting in through the open window while Dean maps Sam's bones, over and over, knowing the line of them by feel but checking again. Just in case.

*

June is hunting, because even when he has Sam under his hands after so long Dean chafes at stillness, and Sam does too, no matter that he protests otherwise. It's him that finds the first hunt, a little mystery in the newspaper, and Dean can tell even looking at him from the other side of the kitchen when he sees it, and when he wants to go. It's that distant look in his eye, and the way he's leaned forward, all that weight and strength in his body tipped toward knowing there's people to save. A puzzle to solve. "What's up," Dean says, for the show of it, and Sam squints, glances at him, spreads his hand over whatever oddness he'd read between the lines. _So, get this_ , Sam said, over and over, all those mornings in all those motels and diners and cramped dusty libraries, and in front of Dean now, with his hair swept back from his clear eyes, Sam says, "Get this," and Dean's past aligns neatly against his present, again, always. Can't escape the past, people say, sometimes. Why would you want to, is what Dean always thinks.

The hunt's easy. A ghoul, dumb enough to kill first before it got its dinner. It's taking the shape of a woman, middle-aged and doughy, and it's Dean who cuts her head off but it's Sam holding her still to take the blow. The head drops and Sam drops her body right after, and Dean says, "Okay?" Sam frowns down at her, shakes his head. "Yeah," he says, and wipes the faint scatter of blood off his cheek. When he looks up at Dean, he's steady. "C'mon, let's clean it up."

The next hunt is a werewolf, striding outside its time; the one after that, a ghost, shrieking in the stairwell of a community college where his boyfriend broke his neck, and Sam socks the boyfriend in the face before they find the poor dead kid's bones and light him up so he won't murder any other young lovers. When Dean's taking his turn digging up the dirt, sweat griming up the back of his neck, just thinking of taking Sam back home and getting even dirtier, a cold wind catches against his skin and he looks up in time to see a fallen tree branch whipping toward him, the ghost trying murder to save himself—but Sam shouts. It would've been too late, except that an unseen hand must stretch through the air, batting the branch away before it could crush Dean's skull. Dean breathes, warm wet dirt-smell in the air, and across the grave Sam's eyes are so wide Dean can see the whites all around—but he just says, "Thanks, Sammy," gasped out, and digs faster, and they burn the bones not that long after, so as far as Dean's concerned—they're aces.

In the car, after, Sam's not as sure. Forty miles, almost, on an empty Texas highway on their way back north. Dean's determined to make it overnight. He wants his bed. Hardly another car on the road, yellow dashed line disappearing under the Impala's bulk, and Sam rasps his dry hands together in the passenger seat, sighs. "I did that," he says, under the music, and Dean turns it down, because, yeah. Yeah, he did.

When he looks over, Sam seems upset. "Done it before," Dean says, and it's true. Last summer, and the one before that, and on and on back through the years, all the way back to a shitty sad little house in Michigan, when Dean could've died and Sam shoved a wardrobe out of the way with his mind, because he had to get to Dean and physics weren't going to stop him.

Dean was afraid of it, then. Not so much, now. "You can't get hurt, neither. Noticed that?"

Sam blows out a long, frustrated breath, turns his face out to the dark outside the window. It's hot, tonight, and he's just in his dirty jeans and a sweat-stained white t-shirt, and the back of his neck is damp and the hair there's curling, and Dean could just pull over and fuck him right here. He doesn't—barely—and Sam breaks the silence first, sighing again like he always does. Dramatic bitch, Dean thinks, clearly, and smiles at the empty highway.

"What's wrong with me?" Sam says, predictably, and now it's Dean's turn to sigh. "I—this isn't right, I shouldn't be like this. What else can I do?"

"You can turn a burrito into toxic gas, that's for damn sure," Dean says, and Sam finally does look at him then, bitchy and pursed-mouthed, and Dean grins at him but touches his thigh, too, and gives him the privacy of looking back out at the road. "You can do a lot, Sam. More than I ever worried about. It's part of you. You'll see."

Sam's frustrated by the answer, or the lack of an answer. Well, he'll have to deal with it, because Dean's not up for a training montage right now—Mr. Miyagi taking Daniel through all his moves. Sam knows them, anyway, by whatever weirdness is buried up in his brain, or body, or soul. On their next hunt he flips away a vampire that had been creeping up behind Dean with a lash straight from his mind, the thing's body slamming straight through the barn wall into the night beyond, and he's panting afterward, but his eyes are less shocky. In Baton Rouge, a week later, he reads the mind of a furtive widow they're questioning, and when she goes to lie again he says _tell me the truth_ in that particular tone and it spills right out of her, motive and means and location of the grave all at once, and Sam swallows and his lips are so tight at the corners after the skin's gone white, and that's another win for the good guys, in Dean's book, and he says so, but Sam's quiet.

When Dean wakes up in the motel room that night, he's alone in bed. He finds Sam sitting on the sidewalk outside the room, angsting. Typical. He sits down, too, and Sam raises his eyebrows at Dean's boxers and his ratty holey shirt, but Dean just says, "I'm too old to care if people see my knees, relax," and then he says, "What's up, Sammy," as though he doesn't know.

Maybe his tone gave him away a little: Sam's mouth twists, when he looks back down at his tucked-up knees. "You don't get it," he says, and Dean could shake him by the neck if it weren't so very, very Sam. "It's just—I didn't want to be this way. It wasn't supposed to be… me. Like this."

"I know," Dean says, and he does. Sam in a panic about his visions—about whether it made him a _freak_ , or a monster, or worse. Dean figured out, a long time ago, about the power coming from hell. The demon blood, trickling through Sam's veins. He'd been in a panic about it too, and he'd thought some of those things himself, but there was always something else, something more important, overriding it. "I told you. You're just—you. So, you've got skills. So what. Just because I'm a supernaturally good shot, doesn't make me a monster."

Sam snorts. "Not the same," he says, and Dean says, "No shit, but I'm right, anyway."

Sam looks away. "Maybe," he says.

*

In July they run into a demon, and Sam starts to change.

It goes like this, every time. Dean's torn, too, every time. In those first warm days Sam's just—his little brother. Every ounce of him: stubborn and cautious, clever and worried, sure as hell of himself and tearing little pieces of himself away, worrying at his own edges until Dean has to distract him to stop him getting entirely frayed. In the year before Dean died Sam was a force of nature. Strong and getting stronger, smart and getting smarter, every ounce of him certain that they'd find _something_ , that there would be some way, and there were days that Dean believed it, too, just looking at the monument of Sam's surety.

The way Sam's face just cracked right open, on that last day—for a moment, it wasn't the dying so much that scared Dean, as it was the fact that this was his little brother he was leaving behind. It was all over Sam's face—all the little boys he'd been, all the phases of him that Dean had bandaged up and teased and taught and fought and hurt and loved. Dean had raised him right, he was pretty sure, because—just look at him. Still, it was a hard thing, to leave him then. He hadn't been worried, not really, but he'd had to reassure, anyway. He'd told Sam, how strong he was. How he'd have a life, and he didn't need Dean hanging around to make sure he'd be okay. He could find his way to being okay, all on his own, in a way that Dean never could.

Well. Dean was half-right. Sam found a way, and he did live, because what happened to Sam in hell couldn't be called dying. And he didn't need Dean around, not really, to keep living. Dean's just hanging around, waiting, all the winter long, until he gets his shot, and in those first weeks of warm days and cool nights and Sam being confused, cautious, he's the little brother Dean remembers, and he hates himself, some midnights when Sam's fallen asleep with the sheet barely caught around his hips and his face turned toward Dean's on the pillow, that he cherishes this little bit of time. This month or so, when Sam's all his, and doesn't know any different. What does that say about him, he used to wonder, but in the last year or so—fuck it, he's thought, more than once, and used the excuse of a deep night and not sleeping to brush Sam's hair back from his forehead, so he can see him better. Fuck it, he's thought, because he is _not_ okay, and he's old enough now to be honest to himself, especially when no one else is around to see. He's not okay except when Sam is here, and the Sam he gets at first is just his, all his, in every way that matters.

The summer creeps on, though, and it's usually July—though sometimes a little earlier, and sometimes later, it's usually right around the fourth, and usually Sam's given up his fretful research and is now just worried about his powers, his strength that surprises him when he reaches for it thoughtless and it's right there for the taking—and it's July this year, too, when they head toward a case they think might be a shapeshifter and it turns out there's a demon, possessing the pastor of the dinky little church in this dinky little town, and when they step into the empty dusty space full of mote-sparked light the demon gasps, its eyes going immediately black from edge to edge, and it says, "My king," and crumples to its knees, and Sam says, "No."

The demons usually hide better. Dean holds back, in the doorway, and doesn't say anything. In fall, and winter, and in the first early days of spring, Dean never sees a demon at all—at least, not anymore, since he stopped summoning them, when Sam wouldn't let them speak. He knows they operate, because hell has to spin on just as much as the world does, and he knows people still make deals, and he bets that on the racks, downstairs, pain is still meted out to the last ounce, blackening souls to bitter smoke. He knows that, and he knows that Sam doesn't stop it _._ Demons gotta demon, he's thought, when he's drunk and it sounds funny, and when he sobers up he wishes, bitterly, that at least one could come his way, so he'd get the satisfaction of killing it.

This demon hasn't moved from its knees, its shoulders in the old-man body hunched, and its hands digging into shoddy carpet so tight that Dean bets tendons are snapping. He doesn't say anything and he watches Sam, a step in front of him, lift his head, and watches his back straighten up, stiff. "What are you doing here," Sam says, flat.

The demon's fingers clutch at the carpet. A nail snaps, and bleeds. "I—please," it says. "I didn't mean to—if I had known—"

"Answer the question," Sam says, and it—resonates, a shiver that Dean feels not in his skin or bones but right in his hindbrain, his whole self wrenched to attention, and the demon babbles out that it was only tempting the congregation, that it was trying to offer only the option of corruption, that if a human _asked_ it would tell them that there were two paths, and surely, surely, if a human _chose_ the dark then it was only to the good of hell, please, please—

Sam waves a hand and the demon snaps to silence as though something cut out its vocal cords. Maybe something did. Dean bites the inside of his cheek hard enough that he tastes iron, watching the back of Sam's head instead of the hapless demon. He tries, he tries, not to think about this. About what Sam's done. About what it means.

"Get out of him," Sam says, after a minute, weird and strangled—"Get out, out—" and the demon doesn't waste a second, boiling up and then down, absurdly out through the heat register in the baseboard behind the pulpit.

Silence. Dean hears his heart pounding inside his ears and hears the working of his own throat, and Sam when he turns around is blinking, confused, wretched. "Why did it listen," he says, but it's not really a question, because he heard what the demon said, and he can work out two plus two better than just about anyone.

It comes faster, this time. Sam sits silent in the passenger seat, and when they stop at a motel instead of heading straight back to the house, he says, "Can you go for Chinese? I'm hungry." Like Sam has ever been hungry, when something's bothering him. Dean's first surly response is to say no, and then it's to say, go fuck yourself, Sam, because it's not like he hasn't been carrying this too, and for longer, and hoping every summer that somehow it wouldn't be true. But he's old enough now that Sam looks even younger, and Sam's miserable in every line of him, his eyes tight and his mouth turned down at the corners and his hands a tangle, drooped between his knees. So, Dean says, "Sure, but you ain't getting any of my egg rolls," and he goes and he finds a place and waits in the car while they make up the order, wondering. Imagining, when he doesn't have to wonder.

When he gets back, Sam's calmer, but his eyes aren't any less tight. That night they go to sleep on their separate sides of the bed, Sam curled away, and Dean puts his back to him and knows that his eyes are open and that he's not even trying to rest. What can he say, though. What can he possibly say.

That first summer. Dean had put everything he had left into the ritual—all his hope and hopelessness, every ounce of belief he could dredge up. Not belief in God, and certainly not in himself; every thought was pinned solely on Sam. On what Sam meant. He'd woken up aching, in his stupid gold robes and with his pulse weak from the amount of blood he'd lost, his hands sticky with the crushed flowers, and found Sam fussing over him, worried more about him than about being dragged backwards out of hell, and he'd been so shocked that it worked that he didn't question, for a while, what had happened, or what was coming. That morning it was only the two of them, in that lull by the river in the shade of the trees, and they fucked urgent and desperate and glad, spread out haphazard over the thick grass and the cloth-of-gold, Dean's hands in Sam's hair and Sam's hands on Dean's face and Dean's voice, wrecked after the long day of prayer, whispering how he loved Sam and he was sorry and how he'd never, ever, ever give Sam up, ever again, he swore, he swore. He didn't know then that time would make him a liar, and neither did Sam. It wasn't until a week later that he realized the bargain he'd made, with Sam memory-less and uncertain, unable to tell Dean what had pushed him out of hell, or what had kept Sam there. Wasn't until the changed weather slipped the trees from green to amber that Sam remembered, and then Sam wouldn't say, and only looked at Dean with a new kind of misery, and Dean didn't have any way to fix it. He would've given a lot more, to be able to fix it.

A decade since then and Sam sits now in the chair at Dean's house, flicking through books with intent, not the aimless desperate searching of before. Dean had told him, not long after he came back this time around, that he'd be heading south again, and that Dean didn't know how to stop it, and Sam had promised, that this time—this time, they would—and Dean had been indulgent because Sam young and beautiful in a warm May was something easy to indulge. Now, Sam's not screwing around, and he knows something he's not telling Dean, and it seems to Dean that it's happening a lot quicker than either of them deserve. He gets a little drunk—a lot, maybe—that afternoon, and Sam looks up when Dean drops his glass and it doesn't break but only rolls pointless away from his boot, and he frowns in surprise, says, "What?"

"What," Dean says, and laughs, and it sounds mean to him even through the haze so who knows how it must sound to Sam—and Sam does sit up straight, looking at him. That expression sobers Dean up, a little, and he's not laughing but he gropes for the bottle, anyway, dragging it closer across the wooden boards. "Just—figures, is all. Just figures."

He waves a hand, encompasses Sam leaning over the books and his own sorry state, sitting on the floor in his own house, and the house itself, and everything about this miserable summer. Hot today, and humid, and he couldn't afford air conditioning even if the house had it, and there's sweat at his temples and soaking down his shirt from the pits and he can smell Sam, even five feet away across the room, and it's killing him.

Sam looks at him, frowning, until it breaks and he just looks sorry. Once, three years ago just before Sam had to go away again, he'd sighed with his face buried in his hands and he'd said _stop asking, Dean—fuck, can you just—stop,_ and his voice had been such that Dean did, instantly. He shut right up and he didn't try to ask again before Sam left, or ever after. The Sam in front of him isn't there, yet, he doesn't think—he's still looking for an answer, because the truth hasn't surfaced through whatever merciful fog gives them those handful of sun-drenched weeks where the truth doesn't yet hurt—but that Sam's coming, and Dean isn't ready for him, not yet. "I miss you," Dean says, to a Sam who isn't here at all and never will be again, and Sam's face flips through so many expressions so fast that Dean can't read a one of them and he drops the book he was holding, heedless—"Hey," Dean says, vague, because he knows he killed for that one, and Sam of all people shouldn't be mistreating books—but Sam's right there in front of him, dragging Dean up, and he's saying—something—but all Dean's got is the warmth and the bulk of him and his smell, his salty familiar body-smell, the thing Dean forgets first, every year. Dean clings and buries his face in Sam's throat and tries to forget every other thing, right now, when it doesn't hurt.

Hungover, in the morning, and sore. He blinks awake and Sam's not there, but there's movement in the kitchen, and the smell of coffee. His ass hurts. He turns over, in the tangled uncomfortable sheets, and he hardly remembers getting fucked, except that as he looks at the bleak ceiling it comes back in disconnected little dashes of memory. He made some wild animal sound as Sam pushed in—not enough prep, maybe—and then groaned loud enough at how good it felt anyway that Sam laughed, soft and delighted. He knows he babbled some, and remembers enough that he knows it was embarrassing as hell, except that he doesn't think Sam made fun of him, because he remembers a patient voice saying, _I know, Dean._ Remembers spreading wide, room so dark that he couldn't see Sam's face, and pulling up his legs and Sam saying, _yeah, wrap them around me—yeah, I got you_ —and he doesn't remember coming but he remembers holding Sam as he did, the long groan muffled against his shoulder, and then Sam touching his face after, smearing wet.

Not wet now—just nasty dried crud all over him, and when he feels between his legs he's hurt, but not unbearably so, and there's a little blood but it's old, drying up. He sits up, ignoring the sting but otherwise feeling every single day of his forty years, and Sam appears in the doorway then, holding two mugs. He's just in his boxers, so Dean can see the long stretch of his perfect still-young body, the hickey on his throat and the actual bite-shaped bruise around his left nipple, and Dean might be an old man but he feels himself blush, collarbone to hairline, and Sam gives him a crooked smile, and holds out one of the mugs.

They sit together, on the side of the bed. Sam doesn't ask how he is, and Dean returns the favor. The coffee's a lot better than Sam's usual; maybe he actually read the instructions on the side of the coffee can. Dean slurps at the side of the mug, noisy, and Sam darts over an annoyed look. Unexpectedly, another memory from last night: Sam's voice, curled over the top of his ear, saying, _I'm here_ , and Dean shaking his head because it was true and it wasn't, all at the same time. It settles that same old cloud over the weirdness of the morning, and he holds his mug over his sheet-covered crotch, the warmth filling his palms, and looks out the window onto the already-hot day.

Sam must sense the return of his mood, either from knowing him well enough or because he somehow divines it. Dean doesn't know. Either way: another glance to the side of his face, and then Sam straightens up, and sighs. "I haven't found anything," he says.

Dean knows. He doesn't respond. Doesn't seem worth the breath.

From the corner of his eye, another glance. "I… Dean."

He swallows, dry, and then takes a sip of coffee, after all. He has to piss, and his head hurts, and so does his chest. "Sam," he says, ironic.

It's not fair, and Sam knows he knows that it isn't. All he gets, though, is another sigh, and then Sam says, "No, screw this," and he takes Dean's mug out of his hand, and puts both coffees on the wide window-sill, and then stands in front of Dean, rumpled and smelly and tall. His eyes, when Dean meets them, are serious, and his mouth's a rueful slash. "I know there's something you're not telling me. What is it?"

"Ha," Dean says, flat. If anyone's going to make a fuss out of not telling secrets. But—Sam doesn't know, apparently, not yet, and Dean… He's got an answer, if not all of it. "Just wait," he says, his gut sour. "You'll figure it out."

Sam's eyes narrow. "You're pissed at me," he says.

"Ding ding ding," Dean says, but Sam only shakes his head at him, and Dean's aware that there's no good reason for it. Doesn't stop him from wanting to just go back to bed—or to leave the house entirely, to go off and kill something, hard and cruel, a taste of the razor that's been cutting at Dean all these long terrible years.

Sam is what's in front of him, though, and unbidden there are about a dozen poison comments lined up behind Dean's tongue. He's getting that impatient stare, that _come on, get the point_ stare, like they're just kids again and Sam's waiting for Dean to figure something out, and Dean wants to say—fuck, so many things. All the packed-down anger swelling up, rounding his shoulders like he wants to take a swing—at _Sam_ , of all things on the earth. But, just like that, the feeling deflates. He looks down, at his empty hands, and shakes his head. "Why did it have to be you, Sammy," he says, and Sam's silent in response.

He could say it as easily of himself. Why was he the way he was? A thousand reasons, and none. He brushes a hand over his mouth—a sting there, too, suddenly, and he remembers now that Sam had bitten him, sharp and wanting—and he says, "Mel Brooks doesn't know shit," and when he glances up Sam's totally confused, and his face startles Dean into laughing, even if it's short. "You're the king, Sam. King of hell, hail Caesar, all that crap. You must've figured that out."

"But I—" Sam says, and Dean realizes with totally unwelcome amusement that Sam _hadn't_ , at least not completely. "If I was in charge of hell, then shouldn't I be able to—I got you out, didn't I?"

"Yeah, you did," Dean says. "And you got stuck there instead, damn you, and now the demons are your dogs to send running, and here I am upstairs just getting older every year, and you won't ever tell me how to get you out."

He stands up, into Sam's space, and Sam takes a step back—out of surprise more than anything, Dean's sure. "Gotta pee," he says, rather than say anything else, and takes himself into the bathroom and closes the door and sits down to do it, leaning over his own knees. His thighs hurt, and his asshole, and his chest still keeps up that ache, like he's remembering that first month alone on this stupid planet all over again, and even while he tries to focus on his own misery he's thinking of Sam, standing alone in the bedroom with that look on his face, and how there's just not enough time. Not nearly enough.

Sam's quiet for the rest of that day, and distant. Dean makes stuff for tacos, for dinner, and Sam eats, and that night he curls up so close behind Dean's back that Dean instantly breaks out in a sweat, but he doesn't move away. On his belly, Sam's hand spreads out wide, and Dean feels the weight of it with every breath. It's a comfort.

It rushes in. Dean can see it, day by day. Sam's distracted, his eyes somewhere else. July creeps along and the days get dry and hot, grass dying in the wild-grown fields around the house, and a few times they take a job, and Sam does nearly all the work himself after Dean drove them all the way—a ghost, wrenched into stasis by Sam's thoughts, while Dean burns the bones unmolested; a werewolf with its heart stopped as soon as Sam grabs it, and its mate, shocked, standing still for Dean to unload his silver bullet. Sam drives back, that time, and they're quiet, Dean watching in the wing mirror as the night unspools behind the tires. When he looks Sam in the eyes he sometimes expects a flicker of yellow—or worse, of pure white. It doesn't happen, but it's what Dean imagines, when he closes his eyes.

They have sex that night—or that morning, the hours blurred away until Dean's so tired he can't quite read the clock. Sam presses him up against the car, even if the house is a dozen yards away, and goes to his knees in the dirt and the dead grass, peeling open his jeans and sucking him down soft, his mouth insistent and hot. Dean's held up by Sam's hands on his hips and his shoulders pressed painful against the metal of the roof, his head tipped back and his eyes on the dimming stars. When he's hard Sam stands up and kisses him, his tongue all bitter-salt and his lips coaxing, and Dean puts his hand under Sam's shirts on the warm taut skin of his stomach and falls into it, his mind a blank, and Sam's urgent and vital and _there_ , which is all that matters, right then.

After, with his hand still on Sam's dick and dawn creeping upward over the dead farms, Sam says, "I wish you wouldn't hate me."

Dean blinks, the world still off its rails. He hasn't slept enough for this. "I don't," he says, and that's true.

A huff. Sam strips his overshirt off, swipes first over his own stomach and then, not ungently, over Dean's. His shoulders are so broad, blacker shadows against the night, with the dark shape of the house picked out behind him. "I…" Sam starts, and then seems to think better of it. He sets a thumb under Dean's jaw and tips it up, and kisses him again there, unhurried, and while their mouths move Dean's mind goes once again happily blank: there's only Sam's tongue against his, and the scrape of their stubble together, and Sam's hand against his throat, warm and big.

"Come inside," Sam says after a while, and tugs, and Dean follows, and watches Sam draw a bath in the lamplight, and lets himself be drawn down into the water, the warmth reaching the aches in his hip and back, lapping comfort against his skin. Sam watches him right back, and wipes a pruned thumb over his lips, and then draws him out again and lays him wet and face-down on his bed and then pushes his dick inside Dean without a question or any prep, and somehow it doesn't hurt, though it should. Dean's thoughts jumble, focused only on the slow in-and-out of Sam moving in him, and the smell of Sam's breath coming hot over the curve of his shoulder, and his dick swells against the damp blankets but he doesn't come, even if Sam takes his time about it, pausing his rhythm just to churn slowly inside, with his fingers tracing unseen shapes over Dean's ribs, drawing it out until he shoves inexorably back in, and Dean makes a punched-out sound low in his throat, and Sam squeezes his hip but keeps going.

Morning again and Sam's pressed against his back, his thigh firmly between Dean's, and Dean's still distant from himself, and left guessing. Not sore, today. Sam's thumb draws a half-moon smile over and over beneath one of Dean's nipples, keeping it tight and tingling, and his dick's snugged up against Dean's ass, and Dean could get up, because Sam's not holding him down, but he doesn't.

"I remember," Sam says, and Dean can't make sense of it, his mind an overtired blur. "Everything, now."

Too early. That's all Dean can think, at first. July's not even over yet. He turns his head, but all that gets him is Sam's mouth ducking to brush his shoulder, and his hand grounding over Dean's chest. "Bully for you," Dean says, finally, but it's weak.

Huff against his skin. Sam says, "I'm going to tell you, but not today."

Dean doesn't understand that, either, for a minute. When he does, he goes stiff all over, like everything's trying to engage all at once and he's locked up the engine. Sam's hand drags down his chest to his sticky belly, and there his fingertips dig in, tight. "Not today," he says, resonance in it, and Dean swallows and subsides, because he was forced to, because Sam _made_ him, and when Sam gets up after a while Dean stays in bed, staring unseeing at the window, because—because Sam's going to tell him, and what should be a triumph doesn't feel like one, not at all.

*

Sam does wait, a full week. They go out on another hunt but it's so clearly just to distract Dean that he doesn't even enjoy it: a witch, who Sam finds apparently entirely via his mind, and she's so terrified when they walk into her house in a forgotten little corner of suburbia that she turns her face away and _lets_ Dean kill her, and when he looks at Sam there's nothing but placid certainty in his face. So the bitch killed four people—it shouldn't be that way, and yet. "She made a deal with a demon," Sam says, when Dean asks, and that's apparently all there is to it. Dean wonders what happened to the demon, and doesn't ask. Some things it's better not to know.

It's a Thursday, when Dean wakes up with a start in the middle of the night, and Sam's sitting up, in tugged-on jeans and a spill of moonlight, and Sam's face turns toward his but Dean can't see his eyes. "Ten years," Sam says, nonsense for a moment until Dean's brain comes online. "To the second. Can you feel it?"

"What?" Dean says, sitting up, and then, "No, Sam—what?"

"You were torturing that man," Sam says, and it floods back. Dean blinks in the dark, surrounded by material solidity of the sheets tangled around his hips and the pressure of the mattress supporting him below and the warm close summer-night air filling his lungs, but none of that is as real as _knowing_ the razor in his hand, and the blood slicked up his forearms, and the pure and wretched terror of—who was it? He doesn't know.

Sam does. Sam knows every part of it.

*

_Sam says:_

I don't know if you… Maybe you remember, but it's been a while. When I died, back after that stupid fight with Jake, at Cold Oak. I don't remember being dead—maybe I went to hell, who knows—but when you brought me back, that summer, I asked Bobby what you did. Why you did what you did. He wouldn't talk about it, either. None of us like to talk about it.

That summer, when you were dead, I couldn't handle it. It was like—you were there, all the time. It wasn't like it was before, with Dad, or with Jessica. I guess that makes sense. But it was—every day. I'd wake up and you weren't there, and just from that first five minutes of staring at the ceiling and trying to get my head around it, the world wasn't right. Like there was this huge hole in the side of the plane and everything should've been getting sucked out into the atmosphere, but no one else seemed to notice. I wasn't even trying to be normal, I knew there wasn't any point, but it seemed like it should've dulled somehow, as the weeks went by. Like, I'd get used to turning and finding you not there. Or I'd manage to head for the driver's side instead of my side, but every time I'd start to walk up to the car I'd find myself waiting by the wrong door, like an idiot. I drank a lot, trying not to dream, but when I finally lay down I'd find myself just replaying that day, over and over. You smiling at me that morning, faking like you didn't care. The look on your face when you heard the hellhounds and I couldn't. I couldn't hear them. That wasn't fair. That you could hear them and be scared, and I couldn't. So—I'd be trying to fall asleep, because I just didn't want to be thinking anymore, and then when I'd dream it was… normal stuff. Us driving, or hunting. In bed, sometimes, but the details were off. Couldn't really feel you, and you wouldn't look me in the eyes. A couple times I dreamed that you'd come back, and those were—the worst. Like, it had all been a big mistake, that somehow we'd gotten it wrong. You'd come back and you'd be happy and real, and I felt so fucking guilty, Dean, I couldn't even look at you. I couldn't figure out how to say how sorry I was, that I'd screwed it up—but then I'd wake up, and there'd be a minute where I thought, maybe it was true. Maybe you were back, somehow. Those were the worst days. It never got better. I don't know if I ever thought it would.

Then I thought, what if—Ruby had been trying to train me, to get me stronger, to fight back against the demons. Part of it was—what I was doing with her, but I realized one day that every time I thought about you, being hurt or in danger, that was when I could do all kinds of stuff. Back with Max Miller, in Michigan—you remember? I moved that huge wardrobe, and it wasn't 'cause of anything except that vision showed that you were going to die, and it just… came out of me. So I thought, maybe Ruby doesn't have it all right. Maybe if I focused—really focused, on you, then I could do more.

I went to the devil's gate in Wyoming. Didn't tell anyone, but Ruby found me, and she was trying to stop me, and I figured out—probably way too late, huh? You never liked her. She wanted me to do what she wanted. Well, I was done with that. I managed to get the gate open and for some reason no demons came out. She kept screaming at me, telling me to stop, but when I stepped over the threshold it was like… I don't know how to describe it, that you'd understand. Like you're hunting at midnight and can't see a thing, except that suddenly you can, even though it's just as dark, and the world's still asleep? That probably doesn't make sense. Well, that's what it was like.

Ruby didn't want to follow me, but she did, and I went down—I guess there were steps. Things in the dark kept shifting and even if I could see clear it was like the world wasn't quite right. The walls were moving and sometimes it didn't seem like there were walls at all, except—I don't know. Maybe you know what I mean, you were there. Whatever was around me was pushing and pulling into new shapes and Ruby kept trying to drag me back, and finally I just—I killed her. There, in hell. She was still in her human body and she bled, because I stabbed her in the chest with her knife, and I—

I never told you this, I don't think. The powers all of the special kids had. Maybe you figured that out, over the years. I don't know. The others—Azazel gave them his blood and they got more powerful. For me, it wasn't… I didn't need his blood, or Ruby's.

I left Ruby there. I didn't drink any more—I didn't need to. I could feel you, somewhere out in the dark, and it was like the lights were coming on. In me, it felt… obvious. I was stronger, there. I walked a straight line and there were demons everywhere. Crowding up on every side, screaming and whispering and everything. Trying to get me to leave—to just go, back up to the world, to leave you be. They said the worst things but they weren't touching me. It was like they couldn't touch me. Maybe because I was really alive, instead of just a soul. Maybe because of what I was supposed to do.

I found you. I could see—all of you. I couldn't take—the things they'd done? That they'd made you into? I pulled you away, I was taking you away, and I thought about all kinds of things I could do. Tear down hell. Kill every demon who'd touched you. Didn't feel like enough.

We were walking and I was trying my best to stop anything else from touching you—because you were theirs, and they could get you if they could just get through me—and I heard… it was her. Lilith. I tried to ignore her but the path just kept winding, and the walls kept getting further away, and I realized that somehow hell was trying to keep us in—that somehow, you weren't going to get out. She kept saying my name and I didn't want to listen, but we were lost and you were still bleeding and I had to stop, and then she was—right there. Right there, standing in the middle of that huge empty space, and all the other demons were pushed back away from us, and she looked at me and she said…

You were never going to get out. You'd always be trapped, there, because you had made a deal, and I was still alive and so the deal hadn't been broken. I said I was taking you out, and she just shrugged and said, _how?_ The stairs were gone. The path had been swept away. I could still see but there was dark everywhere else, and she smiled at me, and tell me that if I just left you here, one day I would see you again.

She smiled. Can you believe that? You were cold, and you looked at me, finally, and you were touching me, but I knew, somehow, that she was right. I wasn't going to be able to take you out, not like that. Not like I was. I asked her, who could break the contract? She said, no one but the king of hell, or an angel, and neither of those were around—but she was right there, and I could see her. I could see everything.

I killed her. I kept your hand in mine so they couldn't take you and I grabbed her and I tore out her throat, and she bled like Ruby had but it didn't look the same. Didn't feel like blood. I drank it, anyway. She looked surprised, before she was gone. The demons ran and hell got—so _big_. It was like I knew every single corner, every soul there and every demon, and that’s when I knew the deal I'd made, and I knew you'd hate me, if you ever figured it out. I wiped my mouth and I kissed you, and I took away your memory, and I've been waiting, since then. I'm sorry.

*

"I'm sorry," Sam says.

Dean's still sitting, frozen on the bed. Sam seems calm. "Sorry," Dean repeats, and his voice feels like it comes over razors.

Sam waves a hand and the bedside lamp comes on without a click. Dean flinches and Sam pauses, then smiles, but it's small. After a moment, he says, "I took the job. Hell was mine, and so were you. It wasn't hard to break you out, after that."

Dean knows this. Has known it. It's not worth saying sorry over—at least, not anymore, not after all this time. He looks at Sam and waits, and Sam nods, acknowledging. His skin glows, in the lamplight, with the moon still gilding his cheekbone. Carved of marble, beautiful, and yet Dean still can't quite see his eyes.

"I couldn't leave," Sam says. He licks his lips, bites the bottom one. For a moment, he's one hundred percent Dean's little brother, and the flicker of uncertainty hits Dean in the gut. "Something about taking the blood of the damned, and being Lucifer's vessel, and killing the first demon. I broke things that were supposed to go one way, and I turned them the other. Jammed the locks. Do not pass Go, and all that."

"But I—" Dean shakes his head. "I can get you out. That ritual, pulling your soul out of hell. It works."

Sam's head tips, and Dean doesn’t recognize his expression at first. "It does," he says, and Dean realizes with a sick lurch that it's sympathy. "I let it. I couldn't face it, forever, and it wasn't fair to you. But, Dean." He sighs, and stands up, and faces Dean squarely. "There was a way. To break it."

Dean surges to his feet, hardly realizing what he was doing. "Are you—" Sam's not kidding, Dean can see it in his face. The wording hits him a second later. "There was. _Was_."

Sam nods. Sympathy, and a solemn curve to his mouth, and his eyes that Dean _still_ can't see right even when they're right in front of each other and the room's full of light, and Sam says, "There was a spell—using an angel's grace, and a sacrifice. But the cost was too high."

A raw empty pit has opened in Dean's gut. His heart beats too fast in the base of his throat. "What—"

"Lucifer would be free," Sam says, and that's fucking nothing—that's nothing, that Dean could ever care about. Sam's mouth twitches, and a shoulder lifts. "And you'd have gone back to the rack. That was the deal I made, with hell. To be in control of where the souls would go. It belonged to me, but I belonged to it, too, and I always have to go back. Always. But now, it's done."

"What's done," Dean says, mouth dry.

Sam blinks and it's like Dean can focus, for the first time since he woke up. He looks like nothing but himself. Ordinary, human. Sam drags a hand through his hair, and he says, "Ten years on earth, and a hundred in hell. Setting the deal in stone." He spreads his hands in the air, empty between them. "It can't be undone, now. I'm king forever. The ritual to take away my throne won't work, anymore, so. You're safe." He takes a deep breath, lets it out slow, and says, quietly, "I'm sorry."

The house is silent, around them. No crickets chirping, no night-birds. Dean hears the blood rushing in his veins, the steady sawing of the air in his throat, and when he takes a swing at Sam it's done without thought, or consideration. Instant impulse, packing his knuckles into the hard bone of Sam's jaw. Sam's head snaps back and he staggers but Dean's there, punching him again, and then in the gut with a curved left, and Sam goes down and he's bleeding and Dean hits him and hears a bone snap, and another, and there's blood on the floorboards and something in Dean's fist crunches and he can't hear anything but this awful, wrenching noise, like someone's dying, or someone's died, and he's on his knees over Sam and he hits him again and Sam only lets him, and lets him, and lets him.

*

He wakes up with his hand wrapped tight in a splint, on the mattress stripped of sheets. There are stains, all over. He hurts.

On the porch, Sam's sitting with a mug of coffee in hand, watching the empty fields. He glances Dean's way, takes him in standing there in his boxers with his sleep-crusted eyes and his scabbed mouth and his old and worthless body, and then he stands up and says, "Hang on."

Dean leans against the porch rail. He feels scraped-out, empty.

Sam comes back with another cup of coffee, which Dean takes for lack of anything else to do, and then he stands close, in touching distance though he doesn't try to do so. Sam's unbruised, unmarred. Skin perfect and no hint of pain. Of course. Dean sips the coffee, winces when it touches his mouth. He doesn't know how his mouth is hurt.

Sam says, "You bit through your lip," like he read Dean's mind, and maybe he did. Dean tongues the inside of his mouth and nods, and looks down.

"I am sorry," Sam says, quiet. "But not that you're free. What I was living with, here. What I saw, when I found you. I'd do worse, to make it so it never happened at all, but even now I can't manage that. All I can do is make it so it won't happen again. Never. You can hate me if you want, but I'm not going to be sorry for that."

He's in jeans and bare feet and that stupid purple t-shirt Dean couldn't bear to throw away and he looks—somehow, still, the same. The same. Dean doesn't know how to hate him.

"You want to hit me again?" Sam says, after a while, and Dean realizes that he's just been silent, staring at the faded dog print on Sam's chest. A shrug. "I won't mind."

"No," Dean says, and puts down his lukewarm coffee on the flaked-paint railing. He goes inside the house, into the dim, and sits in his armchair among the stacks of his useless books, and he closes his eyes. He knows when Sam comes in because the shitty floorboards creak, and he knows when Sam crouches in front of him because he can hear Sam's breath, and he knows that Sam will wait, as long as he has to, and as long as he can, because Sam has made a choice, and Sam's going to follow through with it, because that's what Sam does. That's what Sam has always done, all their lives. It's left to Dean to figure out how to live with the consequences.

*

Sam's sleeping when Dean comes back. A quick hunt, done solo. Only time Dean's killed alone during the summer in ten years. It was a wraith, and it managed to get a nice slice across Dean's chest before he snapped its feeding spike, and it was still screaming when Dean put a silver bullet through its eye.

His stitches smart, and his feet hurt, even after the long drive back. Both fade, on seeing Sam, and isn't that just—a son of a bitch. He's thrown off the sheets, in the night, because he's always too warm, and in boxer-briefs he's just tanned skin and that dip at the curve of his back, and human, and familiar, despite everything. Even with three days away, trying to drown out the clamor in the back of his head, Dean can't get away from that.

He takes off his boots, balancing awkward in the doorway, and leaves his gun and his knife on the chair, and Sam opens his eyes when Dean's weight shifts the mattress but he doesn't say anything. Dean can just see the gleam of his eyes in the dark. He lays down on his back, still in his sweat-and-blood stained clothes, and Sam turns over and lays his hand on Dean's stomach, and Dean closes his eyes and feels the tears seep down into his hairline and he's all of a sudden unutterably tired, just ground down to the bones with it. Sam's thumb drags soothingly over the thin cotton of his t-shirt. He doesn't say anything, and he doesn't have to. Dean turns his head towards Sam, on the pillow, and he sleeps deeply, and if he dreams he doesn't remember it. More luck than he's had in years.

*

There's time. The days move syrup-slow, sunlight blasting through. Dean wakes up with Sam wrapped around him, and they spend their days no more than twenty yards apart, and at night when Dean has to sleep Sam's there, and he closes his eyes with Sam's breath against his shoulder. It makes his heart beat slower, listening to Sam's under his ear. It makes the world make sense.

In all the universes that Dean can imagine, there isn't a single one where his life doesn't revolve around Sam. There are worlds, he's sure, where they were dragged apart, or where one of them died younger, or where they were even normal, and maybe they didn't turn the order of things upside down for each other. Worlds where they got married and lived happy normal lives and saw each other a few times a year, and their children played together at Christmas, and their wives were friends. Worlds where, when their dad died, Sam didn't wake Dean up on the dirty floor at Bobby's house with his face a wreck and his voice a raw whisper of _Dean, I can't_ —and where Dean didn't fall into it, with the relief of a long-familiar song coming on the radio, his body singing along as though to lyrics he'd forgotten he knew.

Sam's it. That's all. Sam's it, for him. In all of those worlds Dean knows that there'd be something missing. Some vital part, unscrewed, and the engine falling apart around the space where it should've been. He'd be able to keep going, maybe—stumble along, in his nine to five or with a wife to love or with a gun in his hand and no one at his shoulder, and he'd do okay. He'd live. There just wouldn't be much of a point to it, that's all.

The thing is: "It's the same for me," Sam says, inches from Dean's mouth in the dark, and he kind of laughs, disbelieving. "You know that, right?"

Dean does. He has to. He stretches under Sam and feels Sam's body against his, chest and belly and thighs and dick, and the drag of hair on Sam's calf, and the sweat behind his ear, and the flex of muscle in his back. Every part and parcel, the whole of him. In the dark sometimes it's easier to forget that he doesn't belong to Dean.

They drink whiskey in bed, in the morning, sprawled out in the sheets that smell like them. Sam says, "If there had been another way, I would've told you."

The booze sinks into the pit of Dean's stomach and he takes the full length of the burn to answer. His lip's still sore and the alcohol stings against the cut. He doesn't heal up as fast as he used to. "Okay," is all he can think to say, and Sam touches his hip before he swings out of bed to take a piss. The warmth of it fades, fast. Dean looks out the window, watches the day creep past.

It's August, somehow. The nights go by faster. Sam pushes into him, in the grass outside, and Dean looks up at the stars over Sam's shoulder and feels time surging by, through, away. A hand, on his cheek, and Sam's holding poised over him, his thumb under Dean's lip. "Be here," he says, and there's no thrum of demand resonating through it but it clutches Dean under the heart anyway. Despite the dark Sam's face is easy to see and he's—here. Right here, with Dean, and Dean's skin shivers all over with goosebumps and he grasps at Sam's arm, his shoulder, and Sam smiles at him—goofy, dimples all over the place, his hair a mess. The grass prickles annoying at Dean's ass and there's probably ants everywhere and his back's going to fucking kill him tomorrow, but he laughs, anyway, and puts his hands in Sam's hair, and is there, too.

They roll apart, afterward, sweaty and disgusting. Dean's too old for this, and says so.

"Whatever, man," Sam says, sounding self-satisfied. "You liked it." Dean shoves at his side and Sam doesn't budge. Bitch.

He stretches, on the grass, and about four things pop. He's relaxed—more than he has been, in years and years—and he can still feel Sam's mouth below his ear, and maybe it's that which makes him say, "What's going to happen, when I die?"

He feels Sam look at him. It's weird, how Sam's attention feels now like a physical presence. "That's not going to happen for a long time," Sam says, eventually, and he says it like a commandment.

The grass is all crushed, around them, ticklish, and the cooling sweat prickles on Dean's chest. The resonance of Sam's voice ripples past his ears to something inside his bones, but he's not afraid. He turns his head and finds Sam staring at him, focused and intent. His face, somehow visible. Like there's a light that he carries with him, always, on the inside.

"I'm human, Sammy," Dean says, and Sam blinks. He shrugs, there on the ground, and looks back up at the stars. The moon's already set and there are billions of them, all over. More than he knows what to do with, most nights.

Sam sits up, leans over him. "You're—" he starts, and stops. He stares at Dean, silent.

The ritual, in spring. A calling, of one soulmate to another, dragging the pair onto the same plane where they both belong. Bread, for the earth; water, for patience; blood, for love; the orgasm a little death, a promise made. All of it bound and delivered with Dean's loyalty, and he's content with what he gets because what other choice does he have—but it'll only work while he still draws breath.

"It'll be a long time," he says, because Sam looks almost panicked for the first time since his memory came back. Dean didn't think he had it in him anymore to reassure, but turns out there's always that little bit of big brothering left. Sam frowns at him, hearing the tone, but what else can Dean say. Sam's future is set, and Dean's not immortal. Unless that changes there'll come an autumn, and then a winter, and no more springs will follow.

He touches Sam's chin—stubble's growing thick. "You should shave, your highness," he says, and Sam bends down and kisses him, fierce and possessive and pinning him to the earth. Dean breathes with it, takes it in. He doesn't know how much fight he has left in him. If Sam's willing to fight, then—Sam'll win. Somehow Sam always does.

*

September. The nights are cooler. They fuck less and just lay together, more. They don't bother with hunting. Why waste the time?

Midnight, a week left. Dean wakes up with Sam standing at the foot of the bed, and when Sam holds out his hand Dean hauls himself up, and takes it. He follows Sam out of the house, across the tumble-wreck of the yard to the car, and Sam sits on the hood and so Dean does, too, the metal cool on his bare thighs, through the thin cotton of his boxers.

They sit and the stars blur overhead. Black clouds obscure the dark western sky; rain coming, maybe. Sam's shoulder is warm against Dean's and it's the only anchor he's got left. Gone, soon.

"I'm going to tell you something," Sam says.

Dean leans back on his elbows, the steel solid, supporting his weight. "Is it that you've always secretly loved the Spice Girls?" Above him, Sam's remote, a big black shadow against the sky. "Knew it."

A pause. This, at least, is familiar. With just a few days left Sam's never quite—here. Feet in Dean's world, but his face turned back to the dark. Still, Dean takes him while he has him.

"If you wanted me to stay gone, I would." His voice is calm, flat. "You'd get to spend the time you have left however you wanted. I'd stay in hell. You could live."

Sam's shoulders are broad as mountains. Dean traces the shape of them with his eyes, and the tuck down to his waist. The curl of his hair, against his neck. "Don't ever say that again," Dean says. Sam turns his head, looking at Dean over his shoulder, and there's that—glow. Dean wonders if other people can see it. This unending light, like Sam's soul's too big for the shell of his body. "King of hell or not, I'll kill you."

King of hell, or not. As though they had that choice anymore. Sam's eyelids dip, and his mouth curves in an odd, upside-down smile. "I'll hold you to that," he says, and really, Dean doesn't know if they can get much sappier than this.

*

Sam always knows how much time is left. It's near the equinox, but his timer runs down according to some clock Dean can't see. "Tonight," Sam says, when Dean wakes up, and it matches Dean's expectation but it's still a blow to the gut. This time as much as all the times before.

The day passes slowly. They eat—steak and eggs for breakfast, and waffles for lunch, because Sam's still willing to eat even if Dean guesses he doesn't actually need to. He lets Dean feed him, anyway. On Dean's laptop they watch two episodes of Dukes of Hazzard, and Dean curls over and puts his ear right against Sam's heart. Sam won't get him for it. Not anymore.

They wash up the dishes. Sam dries, because Dean says that Sam never lets the water get hot enough to really get stuff clean. Afterward, they go and they sit on the porch, and the clouds that have been threatening finally do release some rain, in a steady drizzle that shows off the leaks in the awning, but on the top step where they're hip to hip they're dry.

"It never rains," Sam says, and when Dean looks at him his eyes are somewhere else.

"Tell the mud that," Dean says. It's going to be hell, getting the Impala out of here. If he leaves, tomorrow. If he goes anywhere.

The rain does stop, after a while, and the sun comes out again, sinking lower in the sky. Dean gets them both beers and they drink in silence, and when Dean closes his eyes Sam's still bright. Always, always bright.

"Hey, Dean," Sam says, and Dean says, "Yeah, Sammy," because that's what he has to say. It's what he's always said.

The light's casting deep gold, as they get closer to sunset. It glints over Sam's eyes, makes them hard to see, but he turns his face and he's real again. He smiles, rueful. "See you next summer?"

Dean's heart thuds, hollow. "Yeah," he says. Yeah.

Sam nods. He puts his bottle down on the step, with a low thump. Empty. "I'll remember, next time," he says, and Dean bites the inside of his cheek. "The whole time. We won't waste it."

"Sure thing," Dean says, and Sam looks at him with that look, like, sorry and not-sorry and _I wish_ , all rolled into one. Like he did when he told Dean he was going away to school. Like he did the morning after they kissed. Like he did when he was fourteen years old, and they'd tracked him down in Flagstaff, Arizona, and he'd stood on the step of that shitty little cabin and lifted his chin and not a damn thing Dad said hit him, at all, but he'd looked at Dean, and Dean had been—for a second, a weird half-bitter flash of a second—prouder than he'd ever been.

He's not proud, now. He doesn't know what he is. "I'll see you, Sam," he says.

Sam puts his hand on Dean's knee, and squeezes, and in the space between one instant and another he's gone, and it's like he was never there, except for how the touch of warmth lingers on Dean's knee for a moment before it's gone, too.

Dean sits alone, watching the sun sink below the horizon. A pale sunset, with all the dust washed away by the rain, and the bugs are loud in the yard and in the fields, all around.

Dean collects their bottles and stands up, grimacing with the ache of sitting on the bare wood for so long. His hip will feel that, for a while. He goes inside the house, and shuts the door, and closes the windows against the damp breeze, and then sits down alone on the bed to watch the dark spill over the sky. Autumn's coming. It'll be cold, tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> [posted here on my tumblr if you'd like to reblog](https://zmediaoutlet.tumblr.com/post/190627586479/finally-finished-a-fic-based-on-an-idea-from)
> 
> thanks again to quickreaver for the art. :) I'd appreciate thoughts from y'all, if you have any.


End file.
